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 |   A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| Never Kick the Habit It is a dangerous thing to be kind to yourself. Forget all those self help books that say you have to start by loving yourself; be cruel and unforgiving, demand higher standards, never allow yourself to get away with anything. If you relax on anything, be certain that yourself will take advantage of it. How do I know this? Well, despite the fact that experience has taught it to me countless times over the years, yesterday and today I had to learn it all over again. Sometimes I despair of myself. It happened like this. Months ago, I established a blogging pattern of one post every two days; it's ideal for me, not too strenuous (which leads to creative exhaustion) and not too infrequent to keep the readers happy. And I've kept to that schedule, even on days when I haven't felt like writing. Good discipline, I tell myself; someone has to keep your nose to the grindstone or (I know you) you'll be off somewhere playing a game or thinking about nothing. Yesterday was a blogging day. As usual, I turned up for work bleary-eyed and moaning that I really didn't feel like writing today, I need time to think, all these projects are too big for me, have a heart. Nothing out of the ordinary. So I paid no attention and set myself to work. I even fired up Notespad and saved an empty page as Blog160.txt. And then sat and stared at the page. "I can't do this," I thought. "I really don't think I can do this." It was then that I made my mistake. I relented. Take a day off, I thought, nobody will notice; and you always said that you'd take a break if you feel like it. Go on, it's not the end of the world. So I did and, sure enough, no one noticed. Except me, of course. I should have known that I'd make myself pay for such a decision. Come this morning and the brain has a big sign up on the gate: Sorry, no work today. All employees at Crisis of Confidence Meeting. "Oh great," I thought, "that's all I need. Now what am I going to do?" I sent some desperate pleas for help up to the meeting but received only a few complaints in reply. Nope, we're not up to it today; everything you think of is too difficult; why can't you invent some easy posts for a change?, that kind of thing. It's the breaking of habit, you see. We don't generally recognize it, but habit is an enormous help to us in getting through our days. It saves on motivational energy and does a lot of thinking for us. Habit is probably the most important ingredient in ensuring that we keep ticking on through the days, doing the necessary, producing the goods. And I'd blown it with that one instance of giving in to myself. Now I just wanted to slob around the house, certain that writing was completely out of the question and telling myself that I'd get back to it tomorrow. That word "tomorrow" is the beginning of the slippery slope, of course. It was "tomorrow" that got me into this mess in the first place. It's "tomorrow" today and I feel worse than I did yesterday. Desperately, I phoned the meeting again. "Please," I said, "you've gotta help me, I'm in deep trouble here. If I don't post something today, they'll start to drift away and then we'll all be out of a job." Well, they argued and complained but I kept at them and, eventually, they sent down Albert and Ben, the cleaners, to give me a hand. We sat down together and tackled the problem. All morning we thrashed various ideas around but we knew they were going to be too big for us without the brain to help. Things were looking grim but then Ben looks up with a mischievous grin on his face. "What about a nothing post?" he said. I stared at him. He had a point; it's been a while since I did the last nothing post. But even a nothing post has to be about something. "A nothing post about what?" I asked. "Simple, boss," he says. "Just write about having nothing to write about. That's what a nothing post is, after all." "Yeah," says Albert. "But I do have things to write about. They're just a bit too big for me at the moment." Ben shrugged. "So, what yer gonna do, write nothing today again? You need to get the habit back." "Yeah," says Albert. Ben was right, of course. I had to produce something or things could only get worse. Write about nothing. "Okay," I said, "we'll do it. But one thing, how about us doing an extra one tomorrow so that we're back on track?" "Hah," said Ben, "have to ask the brain about that one." "Yeah," says Albert. "And another thing, boss. Why don't you get these posts done the day before so that there's none of this panic all the time?" "Good idea," said I. Fat chance, I thought. Word count: 860 |
| Greyhound You meet a better class of people on a Greyhound. Apart from the fact that the Greyhound bus is traditionally the way to see America, it also enforces a camaraderie that cannot happen on an airline flight. Being strapped down into one's place within the sardine can that is the modern airliner tends to work against meeting any of one's fellow sufferers. And anyway, everyone is just gritting their teeth and longing for the journey to be over; no thought of human interaction crosses the mind on those slingshot rides through the upper atmosphere. Not so on a Greyhound. A bus forces its passengers to unite in a common goal of endurance and resistance against the endless miles, the whims of baggage handlers and the desperate weariness of sleepless nights. As varied and random a selection of humanity as you may be, the long distance bus journey will reveal each one of you as a person with a story to tell. Not that airline passengers are without stories; but these will never be known. The relative brevity of journeys by air allows us to maintain our protective cocoons of silence for the duration. The bus will break you down, like it or not. The bus company is a willing partner in this process of erosion of interpersonal barriers. Almost invariably, the bus driver will be a stickler for the rules and make this clear from the beginning. No negotiation is possible; he has seen it all and will brook no dissension. And the penalty for any infringement, consisting of being left in some unfrequented stop in the wilds of Indiana, seems too awful to contemplate. The passengers will grumpily accept this, only sharing their rebellious urges in whispered comments when well out of earshot of the driver. But thus begins the welding of disparate personalities into a united front against adversity. The baggage handlers complete the process. It takes only the first disaster to some hapless soul to ensure that one becomes paranoid about baggage. Everyone learns that their first priority at each stop is to watch what happens to their bags in the hold. Are you continuing on the bus to the next stop? Be assured that a baggage handler will remove your bag and try to put it on another bus. Are you changing to another bus? Better grab that bag and keep it with you; otherwise, it will stay resolutely on the bus and head off to parts unknown. So at every stop a gaggle of watchful and jumpy passengers will form around the opened baggage doors of the bus. And, inevitably, tales of previous mishaps and near-misses circulate, bringing everyone together and creating new alliances. Most of the travelers are young but all age groups are represented. And, once the journey has begun and seating arrangements been decided, unlikely pairings and teams emerge. As time and distance extend, some leave and others join and new mixes are formed. We are all grist to the Greyhound's mill. And so the stories emerge. There is the young guy joining at Oklahoma City, already exhausted by the miles from San Diego and on his way home to Maine - from the south western corner to the north eastern end of the States, about as great a distance as it is possible to make on a Greyhound. A young African American with all the gear, trendy and hip, travels to Chicago to care for his father, desperately ill in hospital. A retired steelworker makes the short hop from Pittsburgh to Allentown, going home after visiting his girlfriend. And some good ole boys from Missouri swap lies of their exploits as they spread out on the back seats. All these and more, bound together by the need to be elsewhere, brought together by chance and co-existing in harmony as they travel. Days and nights of movement follow, interspersed with occasional waits between buses, and the little community changes gradually as it crosses the face of America. Soon those who began the journey with you have disappeared, their faces replaced with others, and you begin to feel like an old hand, accepting your new role of intrepid traveler and occasional help for the newcomer. Outside, America drifts past, always the same yet subtly different. The open plains give way to hills and mountains, the dry ranches of the south west to the hill farms of West Virginia. Great cities like St Louis, with its gateway to the west, that soaring arc towering into the sky, is succeeded by greater cities yet; and always the bus heads for the center where the skyscrapers crowd together as though huddled for protection against the vast emptiness of America. Nothing prepares one for the sight of New York City at night from the New Jersey shore. Here is a landscape of bright lights rising to the sky against the dark backdrop of night; a landscape stretching around and extending arms to engulf one as we draw near. I am not one for great cities yet the Big Apple lives up to all its promises - from a distance. I will say no more of the places I saw; this is, after all, a celebration of an institution that has receded from view as air travel becomes the norm. But the Greyhound bus remains as a reminder of its literary past. And still there are those who prefer it to the convenience and speed of flight; I met a tough little old lady who had plied the Greyhound routes for years and, though she complained as loudly as any other about the waiting and discomfort, she would not dream of going any other way. Word count: 945 |
| A Romantic Thought I read every newsletter that crosses my newsfeed. Well, at least give ‘em a good scan. Sometimes they ask interesting questions and, who knows, I might get interested in trying even the most unlikely genres. This morning I was reading the latest Romance/Love newsletter when I came across a reference to a contest I’d never heard of before. It went under the title of Awwww - Romantic (I didn’t count the Ws but there were a lot of them). It’s probably impossible to read that title without hearing a voice saying the (alleged) words. Which makes it a good title as far as attracting its intended audience is concerned. Normally, I would have passed on without a comment but this time I experienced a little revelation as I read the words. In my entire life, I’ve only written two stories of romance. The first was for a contest in WdC years ago and the genre was specified in the rules. And the second was only recently and was entirely accidental, the result of inspiration upon reading the requirements of a contest. To my surprise, it turned out to be very romantic indeed. That gives an idea of how unlikely it is for me to have anything to say on the subject of writing romantic stories. Perhaps it was the proximity of my second romance that brought about my revelation from the Awww contest. Suddenly I realised what is wrong with the genre. It’s in that business about attracting the expected clientele to the contest. I’m sorry and all that, but males never say “Awww” about anything. Which means that the audience that expression intends to attract is female. And that’s fine until you realise that men are just as romantic as women but in a different way. They would never admit to it but the fact is that all great fantasy (well, alright, most of) was written by males. The very genre was invented by males. If not romantic, fantasy is nothing. It is entirely possible that the genre was invented to give men the chance to express their romantic urges. And who are the great romantic poets of the world? Mostly males, I’m afraid. It’s even true that many of the authors of the typical Harlequin romance are male, but they don’t make a big thing about it. There’s a conversation I would love to hear at a sophisticated cheese and wine party. “So what do you do, Jack?” “I write mawkish love stories for Harlequin.” Can’t see it, I’m afraid. But I’ve mentioned the culprit now. Harlequin has captured the genre and turned it into what it is now. Which is fine from a commercial point of view. But it impoverishes the genre when the very mention of Romance/Love brings the image of their sentimental and formulaic output to mind. That is unfair to all those creating more relevant and important work that should be classified as Romance but has to find refuge in more flexible genres. It may be time for the male writers to have a revolution and retake the ground in Romance that once was theirs. Word count: 522 |
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Quite good is quite a good compliment 
As someone who just reviewed an item in your port, I can't help but wonder, Did I pick an item that you'd throw out? 
